Nicholas Bornoff- Quotes from “Things Japanese”

“Around the hibachi,” observed one foreign visitor in 1907, “circulates not only the domestic but also the social life of Japan. All warm themselves at it; tea is brewed by means of it; guests are entertained, chess played, politics discussed beside it; secrets are told across it; and love made over it.” Things Japanese pg 31

“I was told that in one family in Tokyo the fire [in their hibachi] had been kept alive continuously for over two hundred years” Edward Morse,quoted in Things Japanese pg 31

“The Shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s two attempts to invade Korea in 1592 and 1598 were dismal failures. But, taken with ceramics they discovered along the campaign trail, some of his generals came up with a brilliant idea… Rather than burden themselves with crates full of plundered pottery, they kidnapped the potters” Things Japanese pg 32